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If the noodles are the body of a bowl of ramen, the broth is its soul. There are lots of different styles of broths, from basic dashi to chicken stock to intense, pork-based tonkotsu, or any blend of the above. These are then seasoned with a tare or kaeshi sauce concentrate, which roughly determines the [...]

Interest in pressure cookers may be on the rise in large part because of their modernist applications, but in some parts of the world it’s never waned: cooks from Morocco to Mexico have long relied on them as a labour-saving device for preparing traditional dishes in a fraction of the traditional time. So it came [...]

Since my first taste of bianco vermouth (not to be confused with dry white vermouth), I’ve wanted to make it into a sorbet. I finally managed it, but took an interesting path to get there: I calculated it. I was first introduced to the idea of formulating frozen desserts mathematically by Michael Laiskonis, and the [...]

Unsurprisingly, I came back from Ottawa with a renewed enthusiasm for playing around in the kitchen, and especially to tackle some of the projects I’d had less success with the first time around. First on that list: retrograde starch mashed potatoes. This time, I had a better idea of what was essential to the process [...]

On the heels of the cassoulet I made a couple of weeks ago, I’ve continued working with dried beans, trying to get a handle on the best way to cook them. It seems I’m not the only one who has dried beans on the brain. At this point in the winter, many storage vegetables are [...]

In the realm of all things spudular, French fries are king, but mashed potatoes are a close second. As with fries, there are certain criteria that can be used to distinguish good examples of the genre from bad. Mashed potatoes, however, come in two acceptable styles, like peanut butter: chunky and smooth. Chunky mashed potatoes [...]

The idea of “fixing” corked wine by removing the offending molecule, trichloroanisole (TCA), is certainly not new. However, luckily for me, I rarely come across corked bottles. When I do, I almost always forget that this technique exists. However, the other night, I was reading through the wine section of Modernist Cuisine, and noticed that [...]

There are probably as many ways to make chocolate mousse as there are pastry chefs, but they all come down to two simple steps: make a base that contains chocolate, and lighten it with whipped cream, whipped egg whites or both. The base can be a crème anglaise, a sabayon, or even a bavaroise. The [...]

Just a quick post today, reflecting the confluence of two recent inspirations. Recently, I was reading the articles at the end of The Fat Duck Cookbook, and was reminded that sodium citrate is used to make processed cheese slices, a fact that I had previously come across with Linda’s Pliable Parmesan. Then, a thread on [...]

Peanut butter is a staple on my breakfast table, but I’ve long been frustrated by the standard array of options. Specifically, there seem to be two types of peanut butter that exist: processed (which is a complex blend of peanuts, oils from various sources, sugar, salt, and stabilizers) and all-natural (which contains nothing but peanuts, [...]